Karine Shellshear, Executive Officer of ARCH, comments on a report by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives - Manitoba released in October 2002.

Written by Ian Skelton, Professor of City Planning, the report aims to demonstrate the need for Canada to provide greater support for co-operative housing. By highlighting Canada's weak position in having no national housing policy, the report points out that this makes it unique among comparable countries.

In 1993, the Canadian Federal Government cancelled funding for new social housing altogether. Recent developments suggest that the Canadian Federal Government is moving towards developing a new national housing strategy and a plan that includes co-op housing.

According to Skelton, in the 1980's the Canadian Federal Government was funding nearly 20,000 new units of community based co-op and non-profit housing per annum. Co-ops were used to help expand the housing stock, counter neighbourhood decline, and support residents with special needs.

Australia's shift in developing a community-housing sector was embarked on in the early 1990's after a number of states, particularly Victoria and South Australia, had engaged in extensive co-operative and other non-profit housing development. In NSW, Community Tenancy Schemes, and to a lesser extent housing co-operatives, were funded to provide an alternative to public housing. By the mid 1990's, there was a significant shift in policy to grow and strengthen a community- housing sector that would offer a viable alternative to other forms of social housing delivery. Community non-profit housing focussed predominantly on the growth and development of housing associations, with co-ops playing a far less dominant role in the expansion of community housing.

As in Canada, Australia has a well-documented need for affordable housing solutions, including innovative nationally driven solutions. Research in Canada suggests that the withdrawal of responsibility for national housing from the Federal Government has been a retrograde strategy, detrimental to social housing provision in Canada and particularly detrimental to co-operative housing growth. This is comparable to the Australian situation, where for a number of years, attempts have been made to strengthen and redefine federal funding responsibilities under the Commonwealth State Housing Agreement (CSHA). Under the agreement, funding levels have greatly diminished, and housing affordability has further declined.

Professor Skelton observed that, "in addition to economic benefits, co-ops offer the potential for social transformation. Creating co-operatives provides physical environments that are appropriate for people's needs and conducive to their quality of life" (Skelton: 2002:1-2). This coincides with findings by Jenny Onyx, Associate Professor, School of Management, University of Technology, Sydney, whose observations are that housing co-operatives are conducive to developing social capital.

According to Onyx, social capital is a "bottom-up" phenomenon (Onyx, 1996:p.6). Networks and norms of trust are said to enable participants to act together more effectively to form shared objectives (1996:p.7).

Onyx refers to social capital as, "the informal networks that make things happen"(Onyx 2000: p 4).

The key to social capital is always in the relationships ? it's about drawing on resources from other networks ?the capacity of people working together to take the initiative. It is about people as active participants, not as passive victims (Onyx 2000: p5).

Skelton's findings point to the importance of resident control in housing co-operatives in contrast to parallel experiences of marginalisation. Importantly, Skelton highlights the role co-op residents have played in other countries: expanding the housing stock in Sweden; enabling the recovery of landlord-abandoned housing in New York; regenerating stock in Scotland and playing a significant role in Britain and the USA. Skelton also cites co-operative housing as part of the new direction in social housing provision in Australia. Whilst it is part of the direction, it is not a predominant part, and it remains a struggle for co-operative housing in Australia to be seriously considered as a key player in addressing Australia's housing crisis.

Skelton points to initiatives in New York and Canada as providing lessons that should be incorporated into a renewed Canadian model. In particular that, "co-ops require sufficient external resources to ensure that services are maintained, and that training for co-op members is particularly crucial for organizational development ? and that they require ongoing commitment in order for them to succeed". Importantly, Skelton highlights, "the need for willingness by public authorities to invest financial resources ? and to continue to provide subsidies so that housing charges are within resident's economic means". And he adds, "there must be adequately funded infrastructure for organizations doing advocacy and development work".

Skelton is somewhat optimistic in his appraisal of peak organisations in Australia, "that provide direct services to groups in planning, developing and establishing housing co-operatives, and also undertake the advocacy, networking, and policy development work". The Association to Resource Co-operative Housing (ARCH) in NSW, is the last such organisation for housing co-operatives in Australia, offering comprehensive services to housing co-operatives throughout the State.

ARCH has maintained a key role over a period of thirteen years, expanding the sector from three co-ops in 1989 to almost 50 in 2002. Other peak resourcing organisations have been absorbed into general community housing infrastructure, often resulting in the loss of identity, and strategic focus for housing co-operatives in various states. In QLD however, a specific initiative has arisen from the sector, to research and develop a viable secondary structure for an affiliation of housing co-operatives in inner Brisbane.

In NSW, ARCH continues to be supported by the government to play a role in consolidating the skills and capacity of the sector, and to facilitate the gradual expansion of housing co-operatives throughout the state. The need for a range of options is well recognised and, slowly, there is growing recognition of the "added value" and social benefit that the co-operative housing model brings to resident members.

Whilst community housing has significantly expanded in Australia and will continue to be supported in the future, the option for co-operative housing is likely to remain more tenuous, unless there are major changes to policy at state and federal government level, to strengthen the tenant-led housing movement.

Skelton is right, in his conjecture that housing co-operatives require appropriate supportive infrastructure that will allow the sector to grow and develop and for residents to be able to reap the benefits of a structure that is based on community development principles and a theoretical framework of participant empowerment.

Our own experience in NSW shows significant social and economic benefits to co-operative housing members, including benefits to the health and wellbeing of members. Although a limited range of case study work has been undertaken, this together with anecdotal evidence suggests that co-operative housing has more to offer resident members in their re-integration into community life. It has the capacity to offer real and lasting benefits for tenants and develop meaningful housing initiatives and housing policy reform.

References:

Onyx, J. (1996). Social Capital: Theory and Measurement. Sydney, Centre for Australian Community Organisations and Management (CACOM) 34, Working Paper series.

Onyx, J. (2000). Community Renewal and Social Capital. Northern Rivers Regional Conference, Byron Bay, Jenny Onyx.

Skelton,I (2002) Co-operative Housing Part of Solution to Canada's Housing Crisis in Fast Facts, October 31^st, 2002 , Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives - Manitoba